Schedule

Day 1 – Wednesday – 9 September 2015

8:30 — 9:00

Continental Breakfast Hosted by the Genius of Play – the Toy Industry Association’s initiative to raise awareness about play’s critical role in the lives of children. Take the Play Pledge to help us bring more play into kids’ lives!

Since its first product launch in 2011, Toca Boca has released 28 apps that have been downloaded in 215 countries worldwide. With over 90 million downloads to date, Björn Jeffery will discuss how you build a successful company that remains innovative and creative as it grows. Toca Boca is the no. 1 mobile-first kids brand. Hear what it takes to create products kids love and a brand parents trust. Björn will touch on mistakes made and lessons learned over the company’s four-year journey, as well as how Toca Boca continues to evolve and adapt to the ever-changing digital media space.

10:00 — 10:20

Sponsored Coffee Break

10:20 — 11:15

Trend Spotting

The ever-changing landscape of the kids entertainment requires constant vigilance to stay up to date on what’s trending at any given moment. Join our experts as they walk you through the hottest trends in kids brands today. You’ll learn what to watch out for in toys, gaming, interactive learning and programming and leave with inspiration for your own brand.

It seems every person is connected on multiple devices these days. User generated content, social media, video, 3D, print, VR/AR are just a sample of the mediums the average child is using to collaborate and connect with others outside of the school yard. This session will explore what channels your brand should be considering, which to avoid, offer great examples of successes and, more importantly, explore what opportunities exist for content creators in the youth space.

Let’s take a moment to think beyond entertainment and education as pillars for kids brands and highlight brands that are folding social good into their offerings. They are addressing social good by either teaching current events to kids, helping kids understand the concepts of charity or social emotional learning/psychological wellness and assisting teachers and schools with funding and info to help make their jobs easier. Learn more about some truly inspiring organizations working in the social good space for kids and their families.

Whether a household name or just getting started out of the gate, the privacy rules for companies targeting children under 13 are the same. Compliance can be a multi-faceted process depending on where your company is in its evolution. ESRB’s Dona Fraser, joined by experts from Pokemon and recently launched Jet Networks, will discuss the privacy compliance journey at each brand’s distinct and different stages of growth. Take a note from both company’s playbooks on what you need to know about privacy compliance in the digital kids space.

Fast Facts Every Marketer Should Know About Today’s Digital Gatekeeper:

Maria Bailey, author of the newly released, “Millennial Moms: 202 facts marketers need to know to build brands and drive sales” ( Wyatt-McKenzie, 2015) will provide insights into today’s household gatekeeper: The Millennial Mom. She will deliver tactics that can be easily implemented by brands who want to capture a part of the $2.1 trillion moms spend each year.

From children’s book publishing “We Need Diverse Books” to gaming and the tech industry in Silicon Valley, all diversity matters. In this panel discussion of kids digital experts and diversity champions will embark on the conversation we are all thinking about: the state of diversity in children’s mobile media and beyond. These practitioners and industry leaders will discuss the challenges of diversity, highlight promising efforts, and brainstorm ways to fill the diversity gap in children’s content and discuss many questions you may have starting with – Do we create enough strong female characters? How can games dispel gender, race and other stereotypes? How do we make our content creation teams more diverse? Should games be designed to be more inclusive?

Continental Breakfast Hosted by the Genius of Play – the Toy Industry Association’s initiative to raise awareness about play’s critical role in the lives of children. Take the Play Pledge to help us bring more play into kids’ lives!

Let’s step outside of our U.S.-centric world view for this session and take a look at what is successful in other geographic markets. In this session you will see examples of both similar and very different content that is working in other countries. You will also hear an update of any international legal compliance issues you may have to be aware of, for when you expand past the U.S. border.

As developers and creators of digital content for children, some component of education or learning seems almost required for your brand to be a success. Come join the conversation as we discuss the intersections of digital content and learning, co-developing digital products with kids – including classroom versus home tech, STEM and coding being integrated into children’s entertainment, as well as discussing when adding education to your content doesn’t work.

Robots – once the fodder of science fiction– have increasingly become integrated into our daily lives – sweeping our floors, cleaning our pools, managing our homes. But as technology has integrated into every aspect of our lives – how we work, play, communicate, learn and create – a movement has emerged to bring robots from the cleaning ranks to classrooms and playrooms, giving kids early access to coding and programming skills within a tangible, playful, impactful experience. CEO and Founder of Wonder Workshop, Vikas Gupta will chronicle robots’ shift from ‘fiction’ to fact of life, how coding became the modern day tool for creation, the impact they can have in the classroom, and why robots will revolutionize the toy market.

More and more brands are incorporating physical activity into their products – from wearable tech, sensors to digital coaching and incentives. What else will get the kids off the proverbial couch and encourage them to stay fit and healthy? It is completely possible to design experiences that use physical activity to help encourage kids to be healthy digital citizens without making them feel like it’s a chore or work. Join us as we discuss the current examples of physical fitness being added to kids’ digital experiences and see if there is a way to incorporate this trend into your own brand.

Tweens and teens have been using social in new and inventive ways, beyond how many of the platforms were originally designed. They are engaging with their favorite brands on SnapChat, Instagram and YouTube, alongside their peers. They are taking cues from their favorite celebrities, many of whom became famous online. This session will look at the impact that social engagement via content and acknowledgement has on this demographic, and how that has worked for the brands that are staying engaged and relevant to this generation.

While giving away your content for free sounds like a great way to get more people aware of your brand, it’s probably a good idea to have at least one solid monetization strategy that works. This session will review both the tried and true methods, as well as explore some of the more cutting edge tactics that are being used, while giving recommendations on which tactics work best for which sorts of projects. Hear from a unique perspective from the store front as well.